Marcia Milgrom Dodge, the Tony Award-nominated director and choreographer of the Broadway revival of Ragtime, is placing a new revival of Kander & Ebb's Chicago in a vaudeville-theatre setting at Flat Rock Playhouse. Performances play May 18-June 12 in Flat Rock, NC.

Marcia Milgrom Dodge
Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

The Playhouse is the State Theatre of North Carolina. The revival of the musical satire of American justice is set in the 1920s and told in vaudeville-style turns (ventriloquist act, female impersonator, a Bert Williams-like sad-clown song, fan dance, etc.)

Dodge said she is going back to Bob Fosse, John Kander and Fred Ebb's original 1975 script to create her production; it won't look like the current hit Broadway revival, which strips the visuals to bare essentials.

"Our characters are a troupe of vaudevillians performing the headlines of the day," Dodge said in a statement. "So, our setting is an abandoned vaudeville theatre in 1929 inspired by a photograph of the actual Chicago Theatre. Our set designer, Dennis C. Maulden, will transform the [Playhouse] so when the audience enters the space, they will feel transported back to a time of early theatrical architecture and conventions."